G21 - Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
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Market Concentration and Uniform Pricing: Evidence from Bank Mergers
We show that US banks price deposits almost uniformly across their branches and that this pricing practice is more important than increases in local market concentration in explaining the deposit rate dynamics following bank mergers. -
Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in Canada and the United States
Although credit cards are more expensive for merchants to accept than cash or debit cards, merchants typically pass through their costs evenly to all customers. Along with consumer card rewards and banking fees, this creates cross-subsidies between payment methods. Because higher-income individuals tend to use credit cards more than those with lower incomes, our results indicate that these cross-subsidies might lead to regressive distributional effects.